


Like Holly or Blood

by FeelsForBreakfast



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 8th year, Lipstick, M/M, Makeup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 15:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5670400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeelsForBreakfast/pseuds/FeelsForBreakfast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry walks in on Draco putting on lipstick. Things progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Holly or Blood

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering what the most ridiculous self indulgent thing I could think of to write would be, it really might be this. 
> 
> No one has sex here, it's actually pretty PG-13 for being absolute filth.

When Harry sees Draco leaning up against the sink in a loose tee shirt and dark green pajama bottoms, he nearly has a heart attack. He’d thought he was the only one in the eighth year dorms - everyone else in class or camped out in the library in preparation for their N.E.W.T.S - but there’s Draco, nose pressed nearly to the mirror, a tube of bright red lipstick in his hand.

He meets Harry’s eyes in the glass for a beat, then looks looks back down at his own mouth to swipe the lipstick across his bottom lip. His hand is steady as he does it, as nonchalant as any of the girls Harry had watched in his teenage years brushing on powders and creams. Harry wonders in panicked staccato beat where he learned to do that and if anyone else knows he does it. The worst part is that it looks good on him, the color stark against his skin like holly berries or blood.

“Do you need something or are you just going to stand there gaping?” Draco asks, dabbing at his lips with a tissue and touching it up with the color. There’s a petulant tilt to his voice but none of the explosive anger Harry was bracing for. He’s still having flashbacks from the last time he walked in on Draco leaning against a sink, some part of him still squeezing squeamish and petrified.

Draco snaps his fingers, enunciating like he thinks Harry is an idiot. Staring at Draco’s lips, Harry feels like one, though he can’t identify the exact source of the feeling. “Hello? Potter? Do you need something?”

“I was just-” Harry frowns, grimaces, then pinches his lips together. He knows he’s staring but he can’t stop, not with all the memories playing in his head, not with Draco’s lips lined in red. “What are you doing?”

Draco raises both his eyebrows, purses his lips, and turns back towards the mirror to cap the lipstick tube in his hand and inspect his handiwork. “Wasting time.”

“Is that yours?” Harry asks, taking a tentative step closer. Since school started in the fall he feels like he’s had enough of these semi-uncomfortable encounters with Draco to last a lifetime. They don’t scream at each other anymore, Draco just raises his eyebrows and Harry tries not to say anything stupid and it feels like creeping through a china shop with his inevitably clumsy hands. “What have you got in there?”

Draco’s carrying tension in his shoulders and Harry wishes he knew what he was feeling if nothing else. “It’s Pansy’s, I’m borrowing it.”

“Does she know you borrow it?” Harry asks, still hanging on the periphery.

“Yes,” Draco says, turning and giving Harry a hard look. “I’m not just stealing her makeup, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I was wondering that a little, yeah,” Harry says. It should be funny, maybe, Draco in bright red lipstick standing near the bright porcelain sink in his satin pajama bottoms with his hair messed up and flopping across his forehead. It’s not funny, Harry doesn’t know what it is.

The overbright lights of the bathroom make all the new tile shine bright and white, everything crystalline and clean, and Draco’s lips feel like the only color in the room. Draco is still fussing in the bag, taking out small pots of things and shoving them back in and Harry has the suspicion he’s making a production of out of ignoring him.

“Do you do this a lot?” Harry asks, coming up a bit closer, glancing down at the towel he’d brought in to hang up, having almost forgotten about it. The rack is close to the sink that Draco is standing at, and he tries to be inconspicuous as he drapes it over the peg.

“Sometimes,” Draco says, popping open a tub of something shimmery and white and running the tip of his finger across the surface. He leans into the mirror, brushing his finger across the top of his eyelid, leaving behind a shine of pearly white. “Not that it’s actually any of your business what I do.”

“It just looked like you’d done it before,” Harry says, unable to lie, unable to justify. He wants to apologize but he doesn’t want to leave, not with Draco making himself shine in the unforgiving light. “It’s like when the girls did their makeup before dances and stuff, you’re so sure of yourself.”

“I’m not a girl Potter, don’t get yourself confused,” Draco says tiredly, blending the shimmer on his upper eyelids.

“I’m not confused,” Harry says, his hand still hovering on the towel, still staring like an idiot.

“Scram, Potter,” Draco says, that uptight tension still holding his shoulders high, both languid and completely closed off. “If you loiter any longer I’ll put makeup on you.”

Harry doesn’t move, just watches Draco’s hands and tries to justify leaving. He doesn’t have anywhere to go really, he’d slept through too much of History of Magic to attend any of it at all and he isn’t expected at lunch until closer to noon. “Would you?”

Draco stills, his glittery finger paused in midair. “What?”

“Put makeup on me?” Harry glances at Draco’s lips and his hand and the unreadable shine of his gray eyes. “I’ve never done it before.”

Draco sighs, leaning his hip against the sink and making a face. “It wasn’t a serious offer.”

“Oh.” Harry thinks briefly about just taking the bag from the sink and doing it himself, but the urge passes and he nods, turning to go with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He’s at the door when Draco clears his throat, quiet and short.

“You’d really want me to do your makeup?” Draco asks, his voice pinched and something very small in the way he speaks.

“Yeah, I do,” Harry says, because he wants to stay with him in this bathroom and he wants the way that Draco’s face is both serious and calm and he’s curious, morbidly so. He doesn’t know how it would feel, if he would look nice or just strange with his lips colored and shimmer on his skin. It seems, in the senseless way that felix felicis does, like a good idea.

“Are you playing a nasty joke?” Draco asks, after Harry turns and walks back over to him.

“Not to my knowledge,” Harry says, trying to smile, trying to make nice.

“Keep it that way,” Draco says. “I like this, and I won’t have you ruin it just because you think its funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Harry repeats calmly as Draco roots around in the bag again. He’s serious as the grave and Harry can’t quite figure out if that’s how he is now or if it’s just this moment. Harry remembers Draco laughing a lot, a mean spiteful sound that echoed around corridors of his youth and he wonders if his genuine laughter sounds different. He’s not sure he’s ever heard it.

“Sit on the floor, it’ll be easier,” Draco says absently, pulling out a few lipsticks as Harry moves to sit cross legged. “I’m not sure what to put with your skin tone, you’re so much darker than I am.”

“Shame we don’t have Hermione’s makeup,” Harry says with a smile. It’s a bit fun, watching Draco observe him clinically as he sits down next to him, his long legs curling underneath him and his hair falling back into his face.

“Now see that would be borrowing without permission,” Draco says, pulling out a pot of golden shimmer and setting it on the tile with a clink. “I think this will work, I’m not going to do foundation.”

“Foundation?” Harry asks, watching him fiddle around with lipstick tubes, taking off the tops and putting them back on with a frown on his face.

“It’s supposed to even out your skin tone,” Draco says, pulling a cream colored bottle from the bag. “It looks like this.”

“Oh,” Harry says, faintly recognizing the bottle. He keeps finding his gaze pulled back to Draco’s lips, where the red makes his cupid bow even sharper.

“Close your eyes,” Draco says, unscrewing the top to a gold pot and shifting closer to Harry. “I’m going to put this on your eyelids, its called eyeshadow.”

“I know what eyeshadow is,” Harry says grumpily, and Draco makes a noise that sounds like a laugh trying to disguise itself as a cough. Harry wants to chase the sound, make it unveil itself. Draco’s fingers feel strange against his eyelids and he tries to open his eyes only to have Draco clear his throat very importantly. “Sorry.”

“You have to cooperate if we’re going to do this,” Draco says sharply. “No moving.”

“It feels weird,” Harry complains as Draco starts on the second eye, and he does that cough-laugh thing again. It’s the most comfortable Harry thinks he’s ever felt with with him but he doesn’t know why. Maybe because neither of them have said anything rude, maybe because there’s no one else to see them, maybe because there was something stripping about walking in to him with red on his lips.

“Open your eyes,” Draco says, looking him over with a discerning eye. “Close.” Harry does, feeling the press of the pads of Draco’s fingers against his eyelid. “Okay, done with that, you can open.”

“What color lipstick do you want?” Draco asks, holding up three. One is a pale pink, the other a coral orange and the last, the bright red that Draco’s still wearing.

“The red one’s nice,” Harry says, feeling the odd weight of the shimmer against his eyelids. He wonders if he looks pretty, if the shine is as striking on him as it is on Draco.

Draco nods, uncapping the tube and leaning in close, his fingers resting on Harry’s chin to hold his face steady. Draco is so close that Harry can feel his breath on his neck and he fights a shiver. He’d known Draco was pretty, knew from the whispers of girls and from some knowledge buried deep in his own head, but it never seemed as potent as all this. He never used to be the sort of pretty that made it hard for Harry to catch his breath or the kind of pretty that made him feel like he was burning up inside. Right now, the touch of Draco’s hands feels like the scorching brightness of the sun.

The lipstick drags against his lips more than he anticipated, and he lets his eyes shift closed so he won’t be able to stare into Draco’s eyes as he does it. It seems to take ages, Draco’s breathing and the random dripping of a tap loud in the empty bathroom.

“Done,” Draco says finally, a hand pushing his face from one side to the other like he's being examined.

“Do I look pretty?” Harry asks cheekily as he meets Draco’s eyes, marveling at the way the lipstick changes the way his lips feel.

Draco opens his mouth and then lets it close again, tilting his head to the side and furrowing his brow.

“That bad?” Harry asks with a self depreciating little laugh and the rush of an unidentifiable emotion.

Draco shakes his head, rummaging in the bag for a moment and pulling out a pocket mirror. “Look.”

Harry does, peering into the tiny glass at the way his eyelids glisten gold and the red makes his lips look even fuller. “Oh.” Harry sets the mirror down, kissing the back of his hand and grinning when it leaves a lip print. “I was wondering if that would work.”

“You’re going to mess it up,” Draco says, grumpy as he shoves all of the tubes back into the bag.

Harry laughs, his eyes finding the pale skin of Draco’s cheek, slightly pink with what might be a blush. Harry can’t remember if his skin is always that color or if it's usually more washed out. He thinks Draco was pinker when he was younger, sallow when it all fell apart, and pink again in the aftermath. Harry doesn’t think too hard, he just wants, and then he reaches out to pause Draco’s chin, leaning in to press a lip print against his cheek. It shows up bright red and only slightly smudged against the darkening hue of Draco’s face.

“I’ve always thought it was so cool when girls did that,” Harry says, feeling like he needs to say something, hoping it’s okay, no longer sure what they are and aren’t allowed to do in the unwritten rules they’re following.

“Not a girl,” Draco says, abruptly still. The lip print looks like a signature, like a stamp on a letter, like a print in fresh fallen snow.

“I know,” Harry says, feeling the weight and anxiety behind those words.

“Do you know?” Draco asks, narrowing his eyes at him like he’s puzzling something out.

“I do,” Harry says, no longer truly sure what Draco's really asking.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Draco asks, his pale eyebrows pulled together, the glitter on his eyelids glimmering when he blinks. Harry likes the way the light plays off of his long eyelashes, how it leads down to the point of his nose, how it doesn’t touch the sharp line of his jaw. “Boys putting lip prints on boys?”

“No,” Harry says, watching the twitch of Draco’s blood red lips, feeling something inside him light and smolder. “Why, should it?”

Draco doesn’t speak, just grabs him by side of the head and presses their lips together with a serious kind of pressure. The lipstick makes everything feel strange and Harry thinks it's probably going to smear, especially as Draco moves his lips and Harry moves his in response, reaching for Draco’s waist or shirt or anything to pull him closer.

It feels like a continuation of the ritual of putting on the lipstick and eyeshadow, the colors of their skin pushing against each other as they kiss.

He hadn’t thought about it, but as Draco pushes closer to him with an almost angry motion he thinks it’s completely unsurprising that he kisses like this, like he’s proving something and like he’s daring Harry to say anything, daring him not to kiss back. He can practically hear it all in the shrill taunt of Draco’s voice even as he tastes him on his tongue, daring him to say he doesn’t want it.

Harry’s the one who finally pulls back, holding Draco’s face in both hands so he can breathe for a moment. The lipstick is smeared like he thought it would be, dark red and paler pink around the curve of his mouth. Draco has something wild in his eyes and it makes Harry grin wider than he can fathom, leaning into Draco’s neck and dragging lipstick kisses across the skin there.

Draco’s fingers dig into his shoulder every time his lips make contact and Harry has the absurd desire to laugh as he buries his face in his neck.

“Don’t leave marks, please.”

Harry presses a soft kiss against the curve of Draco’s jaw. “Afraid someone will know you’re leaving lip marks on boys?”

“You’re not just ‘boys,’ Potter,” Draco says, his hand still curled over Harry’s shoulder. “And you’re the one who’s leaving lip marks on me.”

“Well you’re not trying hard enough then,” Harry says, leaning back and smiling at him.

Draco stares at him with his wild gray eyes, a manic laugh spilling from his lips and bouncing gleefully off the tile. “You can’t possibly be saying this to me.”

“Why not?” Harry asks, because it’s ridiculous but it doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel like what he expected or even like something safe, but its fun and he likes the way Draco kisses and the serious tilt to his frown.

“Don’t ask like you don’t know who you are,” Draco says, leaning in slowly and kissing up Harry’s neck, dragging his lips to make the red smudge and hold. His neck is a blush of bright red lipstick and Harry feels inordinately pleased about all of it, especially as Draco bites gently against his collarbone.

“You look really pretty with lipstick on,” Harry says lightly, running his hand over Draco’s back and the knobs of his spine.

“You look devastating,” Draco mumbles against his skin, looking at him with that same dare in his hooded eyes. He looks like he’s goading Harry into trying to laugh it off, like he knows that the effect he has makes that impossible.

Harry pulls him closer, grinning when Draco ends up nearly in his lap, the both of them in a tangle of warmth on the bathroom floor. It’s strangely soul baring, kissing Draco and having him kiss back, and Harry doesn’t know what sorts of things Draco is learning from the way his mouth moves but he hopes its the same kind of secret correspondence he thinks he’s starting to understand.

He’s trying to summon up enough courage to push his hand up Draco’s shirt and feel the skin of his chest when a soft burbling alarm goes off and Draco pulls back, his lips wet and still so red. “That’s me.”

“What?” Harry asks, brushing at his hair with his free hand.

“My watch, I’m needed in class in about ten,” Draco says, pressing another hopelessly tender kiss to Harry’s lips and disentangling himself.

“Oh,” Harry stands up with only moderate difficulty, watching as Draco tidies the makeup pots and tries to fix his hair in the mirror.

“You’ve really made a mess,” Draco says, and Harry reaches for him, draping himself over Draco’s back as he stands in front of the mirror, notching his chin over Draco’s shoulder. “Really?”

Harry feels his face heat and is grateful for the brown of his skin as he hopes Draco doesn’t notice. “You’re warm.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Draco says, though there’s no heat behind it as he leans back into Harry’s arms, his breath shuddering only a little. “I’m going to class.”

Harry lets him go, watching as he spells off the makeup with a careful flick of his wrist. “Would you like me to do you?”

Harry just raises his eyebrows, and Draco makes a face at him. “I’m going to class.”

“So you’ve said,” Harry says, trailing Draco out of the room and to the dormitory, where he strips out of his pajama top and rifles through his trunk for his robes, tugging them over his head and messing up his hair again.

“I’m going,” Draco says fiercely, pursing his lips as he meets Harry’s wandering eyes. “Do you usually have this period off?”

“No, I usually have History of Magic,” Harry says, biting his lower lip to keep his smile from growing too wide.

“Shame,” Draco says, looking pensive. “Do you have class at 11 on Thursdays?”

“I usually study in the library with Ron and Hermione,” Harry says, trying to be serious and failing completely.

“Tell them you have other plans,” Draco says, sweeping towards the door. “Meet me here.”

“You sure the bathroom is the best place?” Harry asks. “Might get caught.”

“Wouldn’t that be so exciting,” Draco says, flashing the first hint of a mischievous smile Harry recognizes on his lips, but has never seen directed towards him.

“You into that?” Harry asks with a teasing look, sitting down on his own bed with a bounce.

“You’d be surprised what I’m into,” Draco says breezily. “I kid, but no one comes in that bathroom during class. Well, no one but your nosy self.”

“Flattered,” Harry says.

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Draco says nastily, but Harry feels sure that he’s in on the joke. “Oh and Harry, you have something on your neck.” He slides out the door with a twiddle of his fingers.

Harry watches the place he’s vacated with amusement and brings his fingertips up to his lips. When he pulls them back, they come away red.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know how you felt in the comments section :)  
> tumblr is drarrytrash if you wanna hang <3


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